Agatha Christie's relationship with the Toronto Star, a Canadian newspaper, began in 1927 when they seriliased The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in their "Weekly" supplement. From then on, Christie had numerous stories published in the Toronto Star - both in their "Daily" paper and their "Weekly" supplement. Together, they undoubtedly became the primary press outlet in Canada for her works for the decades following.
The first of these articles covered the first five Christie stories published in this newspaper's "Weekly" supplement from 1927 through to mid-1937. The full article can be found at this link, along with additional insights into the paper itself.
In this second instalment, I look at the next six articles published in the Weekly supplement. In future articles I will look at the stories the Toronto Star choose to publish in their "Daily" paper which were mostly serialised novels.
Part of my goal in doing this series is to revisit newspaper printings of her works as they often contained unique artwork. For decades, this art has been lost to time. However, with the proliferation of digitization of old newspapers fans of Christie now have better access to these old newspaper printings than ever before.
While the magazine publications of her stories are more commonly discussed, it is primarily because they are more easily collected and seen. Newspapers were more likely to be discarded or recycled, making vintage newspaper collecting almost impossible. But now, we can revisit the splendour they offered.
The Veiled Woman: September 1937.
More commonly known as The Case of the Veiled Lady, this story was written in the early 1920s and first appeared in The Sketch (UK) in October 1923 and Blue Book magazine (US) in March 1925. Its first hardback appearance was in the US printing of Poirot Investigates (1925), but was rather unusually left out of the UK printing from 1924. The first British book printing was uniquely in The Hospital Centenary Gift Book (1935) - an oft forgotten anthology and something you can read more about via this link.
This also meant that it had not been published in a book in Canada when it was included in the Toronto Star Weekly on September 25th, 1937. When it was advertised in the weeks leading up to its publication it was referred to as The Veiled Woman.
While the scan of the newspaper includes the ending of the story, it appears there was a printing problem as the beginning of the story was meant to be on page 2 - but instead a different story is shown - Jonathan Had a Horse - which was also advertised in the prior week. There is no future correction known so for now this is only a partial printing with no known accompanying art.
The Witness for the Prosecution: October 1937.
As one of her most famous short stories and later an adapted play, The Witness for the Prosecution was first titled Traitor Hands, and appeared in Flynn's Weekly in January 1925. I wrote an article about this printing and other Christie stories that appeared in Flynn's that you can read via this link. The story then appeared in the Odhams (UK) book collection The Hound of Death and Other Stories (1935).
When the Toronto Star Weekly ran the partial The Veiled Woman, they also ran an advertisement for another Christie story to appear the following week.
This would be the first Canadian appearance of Witness, and the newspaper printed the complete story in one paper. Fortunately, it was all there and included two wonderful pieces of graphic art by Fred Wood, as shown below.
Of note, the ending is the same as all prior book printings. It did not appear in book form in North America until 1948 when it was published by Dodd, Mead in its eponymously titled short story collection. After this story was published, it was almost four years until the Toronto Star published another Christie story and this time it was a longer novel.
He Went Mad at Midnight: July 1941.
Surprisingly, while the Toronto Star Daily was one week into its serialisation of Sad Cypress (something I'll cover in a separate artcile about the "Daily" paper), the Toronto Star Weekly chose to publish an Agatha Christie short story. This was a single printing that was accompanied by a bold illustration.
The title, He Went Mad at Midnight, may not be familiar to most readers. This short story was likely written in the late 1930s, and was first published in the US magazine This Week in September 1939 under the title Midnight Madness. In May 1940 it was published in The Strand (UK), and then in Canada - as discussed here - on July 19th, 1941. It was one of the stories collected together to form the book The Labours of Hercules which was published in both the UK and US in 1947. This story is more commonly known as The Cretan Bull.
The illustration was created by W.J. (John) Heffron, and was the only image to accompany the story.
Case of the Invisible Enemy: August 1941.
The next short story that the Toronto Star Weekly published was Case of the Invisible Enemy. Again, not a common name many will be familiar with, but it was to be another of Hercule Poirot's 'labours', but under the title The Lernean Hydra. Again, this story was likely written in the late 1930s. It was first published in The Week (US) on September 3rd, 1939 under the title Invisible Enemy. In December 1939, it was published in The Strand (UK).
The illustration that accompanied this short story was also created by John Heffron.
The Hidden Treasure Jest: June 1942.
It wasn't until the following summer that the Toronto Star Weekly published another Christie short story. The next one they printed was not a story from The Labours of Hercules but a fairly uncommon Miss Marple story - The Hidden Treasure Jest. This story was first published in The Week (US) in November 1941 under the title The Case of Buried Treasure. This appearance in the Star Weekly preceded the UK printing in The Strand in 1944 under the title initially used in The Week. The first book printings to contain the story - now titled Strange Jest - were Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950, Dodd Mead & Co, US) and Miss Marple's Final Cases (1978, Collins, UK).
The illustration that accompanied this short story was created by F. Scott Wood.
It Was an Accident: November 1943.
It wasn't until late the following year that the Star Weekly published another Christie story - which would be the last one they did until 1951. It was an Accident was likely written in the mid-1920s and was first published in the UK newspaper The Sunday Dispatch in 1929 under the title The Uncrossed Path. It's first book appearance as Accident was included in The Listerdale Mystery in 1934 (William Collins, UK). It didn't appear in a north American book until it's inclusion in The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories in 1948 (Dodd Mead & Co, US).
The single illustration that accompanied this short story was illustrated by Marshall Frantz.
Input Wanted:
I welcome feedback on this article. Are newspaper printings of interest? Is the artwork interesting to see? Anything else that would make a newspaper focused article more interesting?
OTHER NEWS: PODCASTS
I expect many of you are already regular listeners to the All About Agatha podcast, hosted by Kemper Donovan. Earlier this year Kemper and I met to record a podcast all about the world of collecting. That podcast is now live (July 13, 2024 release date). It is rather long - we easily got carried away chatting about our passion and love of Agatha so you may have to break up our two hour chat into bit-sized chunks. You can access it at your favourite podcast site or via this link.
I also know many of you have listened to the podcast "Tea and Murder" - part interview show and part book club - that I recently participated on. Here's that link.
The article I wrote for the Shubert Theater Group about my discoveries of previously undocumented Agatha Christie play scripts of Ten Little Indians and The Hollow used for the US market in the 1940s and 1950s is now having images added to it and should be published in August. Once published, I will share a copy online for all of you.
2024 International Agatha Christie Festival:
A few tickets remain available for my presentation at the 2024 International Agatha Christie Festival. I hope to see you there. For more details or to obtain tickets go to this link: Festival Link.
Closing.
As I usually do, I've likely missed a few things or made a few errors - so do get in contact with me if there's an improvement to be made to this article. I view all my articles as collaborative efforts and want them to be an accurate resource for collectors. I have lots more articles I'm working on but if there's something you'd like me to consider do let me know by writing to me at: collectchristie@gmail.com
Happy Hunting!
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